Okybača is a nonsensical word created as a result of a mishearing of song lyrics.
Most people have experienced this – you’ve heard a song a million times and there’s this one word that just doesn’t sound quite right but you just go with the flow and sing the weird word anyway because you’re a child and your mind accepts that there are concepts it doesn’t understand. What the English-speaking world knows as Mondegreen is called okybača in Czech and refers almost exclusively to song lyrics (although the title of one of most famous Czech theatre plays Hrdý Budžes is based of such misunderstanding of a poem rhyme). And the “condition” of mishearing or misinterpreting lyrics into new words is also referred to as the Okybača syndrome.
Origins of Okybača
Although the phenomenon is probably as old as human speech, the origins of the Czech name are easy to trace. It comes from the folk song Beskyde, Beskyde that goes like this:
| Beskyde, Beskyde, kdo po tobě ide? Černooký bača ovečky zatáčá |
Beskid mountains, who’s walking on you? A shepherd with black eyes is directing the sheep. |
The way of phrasing the song is what’s causing the mishearing, as the first part of the word černooký (with black eyes) is pronounced long and sometimes even with a small space between the two parts of the word, whilst the second part of the word is pronounced without any space between it and the next word bača (shepherd): “černo – okýbača”. And because the newly formed word okybača sounds like a female-gender noun, the child’s mind often changed the previous word to fit that gender and made černá okybača (black okybača). Children mostly didn’t care about what the heck an okybača is and how come it can take care of sheep.
You can listen to the song Beskyde, Beskyde performed by Jarmila Šuláková and Zdenka Straškrabová:
Other Okybača songs
Here are some other popular songs that have their own okybača.
Vysoký jalovec (Tall Juniper)
| Vysoký jalovec (já lovec), vysoký jako já, přeskoč ho má milá rovnýma nohama. |
Tall juniper As tall as me My dear, jump over it With straight legs. |
jalovec – juniper; já lovec – me, the hunter
My jsme žáci 3.B (We the pupils of 3. B – theme to Mach a Šebestová)
| My jsme žáci třetí B, bereme však na sebe podobu zajíce, žirafy či (žirafičí) krabice. |
We are the pupils of three B But we shapeshift Into a hare, A giraffe or a box. |
žirafy či – giraffe or; žirafičí – nonsense but it sounds like a giraffe-related adjective thus forming an expression that the child’s mind can interpret as “giraffe box”.
Ach synku (Oh Son)
| Ach synku, synku, doma-li (domalý/í) jsi? Ach synku synku, doma-li (domalý/í) jsi? Tatíček se ptá, oral-li (oralý/í) jsi, Tatíček se ptá, oral-li (oralý/í) jsi. |
Oh son, son, are you at home? Oh son, son, are you at home? Father is asking whether you’ve ploughed, Father is asking whether you’ve ploughed. |
Both domalý and oralý do not mean anything but they sound like adjectives in this context, so as if the parents were asking the son whether he is domalý and oralý.
Už mně koně vyvádějí (They’re taking my horses outside)
| Už mně koně vyvádějí, už mně koně (měkoně) sedlají, už mně koně (měkoně) vyvádějí a hornysti troubějí. |
They’re taking the horses outside for me, they’re saddling the horses for me, They’re taking the horses outside for me and the horn players are blowing the horns. |
Although měkoň is not an official word, it could be translated as “the soft one”. Hence the interpretation “they’re taking the soft one outside for me” which – at least for the mind of a child – is acceptable 😉
Do you, too, have any okybača in your language or do you know any more Czech ones?
Interested in more Czech trivia? Check out General & Trivia.
Featured picture by the cimbalom band Okybača.
